I HAVE A DREAM POSTER

“I have a dream”, is an exhibition that explores the ideas of Utopia and the possibility of realising a perfect society. The exhibition takes place in the model village of Bournville, founded by George Cadbury, the owner of Cadbury’s chocolate factory, for his workers to created living conditions. He attempted to solve the social problems in Birmingham caused by and related to, bad housing, ill health and poverty to have good quality housing in a natural, green, environment, which offered opportunities for a better standard of living with higher wage. As a model village, Bournville is a part of the urban expansion of greater Birmingham and manages to maintain a unique personality. Part of this is due to the Village Trust who enforces strict rules within the ward (no pubs, no supermarkets, and no unauthorised modifications to buildings) with claims of village-ness and this endeavour for some idealised vision of rural country life.

The exhibition attempts to explore the conflicts that occur when the society attempts to realise utopia and Bournville is an ideal place imagined by Mr. Cadbury. In the same way the Christmas is the time of the year that the people are looking for the happiness through the consumerism but there are a couple of places, like Bournville, that still the spirits of Christmas can be true. The exhibition theme has developed from Thomas More’s Utopia-Dystopia concept and Plato’s quote “You can only realise the shadow of an idea”. Within the exhibition which is demonstrated, likes Heidegger, that you can realise an ideal in Art which can make the idea becomes true.

Pil & Galia Kollectiv, originally from Jerusalem base in London, is collaboration between two artists who work predominantly with video and collage to explore the idea of finding life in the ruins of the twentieth century. Two video animation films and a series of images, which are shown in this exhibition, investigate concepts of man-machine and cyborgs as metaphorical materials of violence and desire, decay and regeneration. They are interested in exploring how twentieth century urban life effect human desires, fears and perversions. Using a combination of visuals and sound the Pil & Galia Kollectiv collage imagery of sculpture, installation and reconstructed social spaces within their video animations and images which are influenced by Russian constructivism, early European cinema and cartoons from the 1980’s.